1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to the field of semiconductors and, more particularly, to approaches for removing gate height variances in devices such as field effect transistors (FETs).
2. Related Art
During fabrication, semiconductor devices such as FETs often include a stage in which a dummy gate is formed and later removed. Various layers such as hard mask layers, spacers, etc., may be formed over/around the dummy gates. In many cases, this leads to an uneven gate stack height among the gate stacks. Such a condition is then propagated through the various stages of device formation that follow. For example, when the dummy gates are later removed, the uneven height that existed often leads to uneven spacer heights. This can lead to performance issues unless corrected before the device formation is completed.